Rethinking History

I apologize, in advance, for any of my past posts that might offend you. :)

Having been in military intelligence (enlisted and officer both), studied engineering physics and graduating with degrees in Biology and Chemistry, and having survived the politics at one of the world's largest IT companies for 24 years, I thank you for the apology, but you may want to save it for some of those in the 'technical' forums that don't know how to spell. Or read. Or think, sadly enough. Thick skin and Kevlar stops many things.

Every morning, I enjoy perusing the tech and science news. Most recently was interested in the age estimation of stars being off by >150M years based on findings from the Planck telescope work.

Excellent! Nice to meet you then. :) I served in the Marines for six years back in the '90's....but only as an enlisted member. Teach science to 11 year olds now. :)

I read that article too. The Planck telescope is the little, but hugely successful, secret weapon of the professional stargazers. Most people have heard of the Hubble, but few know about the Planck. It's amazing how far we can look out from Earth, and what we've learned by doing so. I'm really hoping that the consumer version of the HoloLens will let science enthusiasts like myself get up close and personal with those far off places.

I thank you for your service! On occasion I volunteer for Computers for Kids or at the local elementary school via my company's Traveling Scientist program for math, physics, biology or chemistry. LOVE it. But could NOT do it full time. Hat off to you for serving not only the country, but now our country's future!

Watched the Jan 21 intro's regarding Win10 and mobile, since I've been testing Win 10 Enterprise since day 1, but the HoloLens surprise took the show for me. Took my head zipping along on the art of the possible. Still zipping frankly! The potential applications are astounding, in so many fields, and this is just the beginning.

as per Mythbuster's "Stand back, I'm doing science!"... I cleared the university science building when one of my original research science projects went wrong. Certain compounds should never be mixed that aren't well documented. Show your kids that danger is in the eye of the beholder and how to limit it, as we did, with planning. They'll get it.

Recently, I paid to have my genetic ancestry mapped by 23andMe. The results were expected....I posted a screenshot. The main reason that I wanted to do this was to learn how much, if any, Neanderthal DNA was hidden within. :) After a month or so, I got the results: 2.6% Neanderthal! Yes!!! I, along with many others, am living proof that our ancestors once mated with Neanderthals. How cool is that!?!?
Has anyone else had this done?

I've been considering doing this. I have little doubt I have Neanderthal in my DNA. Though there's always a possibility I don't . LOL! There's a big misconception of Neanderthals as being brutes and so on. They apparently had art and possibly even language.

Both camps meaning the possibility is still there because we have precedence (supposed long extinct animals still being found alive today) and supposedly more reliable witnesses reporting sightings. I still believe they are all very minute possibilities and I also think the Loch Ness/Bigfoot initial famous sightings were proven to be hoaxes but you get what I'm saying. A Kracken is a good example. There are example of giant squids and many examples of ridiculously giant versions of things freakishly growing beyond the norm. The likelyhood of a HUGE kracken like squid...possible. Finding one...even less likely. Recording one after finding it....even less likely. Surviving the encounter after recording it and uploading it to youbtube...even less likely. Random trolls discrediting you on youtube...VERY likely...but its still possible no matter how minute.

I look at these things like this: 99.99% of the sightings and photos can be explained by human error or outright lying. That means .01% is still up for grabs. In terms of the scale of the Earth, .000000000001% is still substantial. In terms of the scale of the universe, .0^(1 million)1% is more than enough.

In a somewhat cliche' way, almost anything is possible. The only 100% surety is me not losing 15 pounds that I so desperately need.

Here's the way I look at this.

There's a very serious consideration when thinking about life, for things to survive you need a population. Having just one or two or a small group will not allow a population to survive, you need diversity. Things like Big Foot, Loch Ness Monster and other creatures require a population to survive. Just because they have found small populations of things they thought went extinct doesn't not give credit to things that are most likely made up are real.

To me, the big foot legend and the yeti could be carry overs from our time when we mixed with other hominids. There was about two to four other hominids living at the same time as homo sapiens. I think Loch Ness is simply made up.

Because of our desire to make sense of what we see and our inability to know that our brains can easily play tricks on us we get caught up in the unknown. Part of our genetic make up is being wary of predators which is innate in us. This means we are likely to see things when they aren't there we automatically give agent (something doing it) to things even if it's just the wind blowing. If you take that into consideration you start to realise that we will easily misread a situation. This is why eye witness accounts are not very good.

Where do you live? I know there's a few places in the US that are a bit 'unkind' to science. Especially the type that tells us about our human ancestry.

I live in one of those places. ha ha ha A state known for its unwavering willingness to ignore science in favor of mysticism: Arkansas. :) I look at it as a challenge. I know science is not for everyone. My main goal is to help my students simply become literate in science. My secondary goal is to change their way of thinking about life. Hopefully, by the time I retire, If I have influenced at least 10% of my students to think more logically and humanistically, I will have played my part in helping move my state out of the dark ages. lol :P On a serious note, one of my favorite areas of science is the evolution of life on Earth. I start each new year leading my students through Richard Dawkins' "great, great, great, great, etc grandparents were fish" thought experiment from his book The Magic of Reality. That usually sets the tone for the year, and causes my students to start asking the coolest questions about life.

I've been considering doing this. I have little doubt I have Neanderthal in my DNA. Though there's always a possibility I don't . LOL! There's a big misconception of Neanderthals as being brutes and so on. They apparently had art and possibly even language.

Cool that you have Finnish in your DNA. :) My wife is half Finnish.

I considered it for quite some time, but was worried about how I would handle learning about possible future medical conditions I was genetically prone to get. I kept telling myself that I could handle learning that I have a high percentage of this or that, but had no way of really knowing for sure. Plus, I didn't want to burden my wife and family with the news. But, recently, the federal government stepped in and forced companies like 23andMe to stop including the medical reports, and to focus only on DNA mapping. The reason: Insurance companies were in the position to start denying life insurance and health insurance coverage to people with DNA results that predicted illnesses covered by their policies. As far as Neanderthals....I would imagine that they were more peaceful and connected to the Earth than our Homo Sapien Sapien ancestors. Apparently, we absorbed them into extinction. I don't know if a species being absorbed into extinction by another species is a common thing in nature, but it definitely sounds like a modern human way of doing things. Take, for instance, the exploration of the Central Americas by the Spanish conquistadors.

Is she really? Does she still have family there? My results were fairly predictable for a caucasian American. It was pretty cool for me to read all about it. The coolest thing is seeing my DNA relatives from around the world plotted on a map. I have first, second, and third cousins (genetically speaking) living all over Europe and the US...and those are only the people who have submitted their DNA. Imagine how many more are out there. I've been contacted by people who were put up for adoption in Ireland when they were babies. I've been contacted by people from all over trying to figure out their past. It really is quite cool. I highly suggest doing it.

as per Mythbuster's "Stand back, I'm doing science!"... I cleared the university science building when one of my original research science projects went wrong. Certain compounds should never be mixed that aren't well documented. Show your kids that danger is in the eye of the beholder and how to limit it, as we did, with planning. They'll get it.

Ha ha ha I had a similar dangerous situation happen in my room last year....dangerous to our noses, anyway. :)
During the first week of school, I gave all 84 of my students a cotton swab with which they swabbed between their toes. Then we carefully wiped the bacteria from our feet on a damp piece of bread. I sealed the bread in a large jar and put it away until the last week of cool. The day before school ended for the year, we pulled the jar out to check out what had happened. The kids were all amazed and grossed out, but things got worse when one of them asked me to open the jar. ha ha ha As I opened the lid, we heard a "shhhhhhhhh" sound as the pressure inside the jar forced the gases out. And that's when it hit us. I have never smelled an odor so bad as that. It was like we were suddenly inside of a mildewed, sweaty gym sock. The odor was so thick that our entire school had to go outside for an "extra recess" until the stench had escaped. I made a lot of enemies that day. lol :D

To me, the big foot legend and the yeti could be carry overs from our time when we mixed with other hominids. There was about two to four other hominids living at the same time as homo sapiens.

I think most scientific bigfoot hunters have this same notion in mind. The Loch Ness case is highly unlikely because of the population issue that you bring up. A sustainable bigfoot population, on the other hand, is possible because there are great expanses of wilderness that humans don't roam around in. I would say sightings closer to cities is a little far fetched.

Regarding the DNA analysis: SUPER COOL!
I'm afraid to get mine done. I don't want to verify the obvious fact that I'm part Hobbit from middle earth. My whole family is comprised of short little halflings

I think most scientific bigfoot hunters have this same notion in mind. The Loch Ness case is highly unlikely because of the population issue that you bring up. A sustainable bigfoot population, on the other hand, is possible because there are great expanses of wilderness that humans don't roam around in. I would say sightings closer to cities is a little far fetched.

Regarding the DNA analysis: SUPER COOL!
I'm afraid to get mine done. I don't want to verify the obvious fact that I'm part Hobbit from middle earth. My whole family is comprised of short little halflings

I look at bigfoot like this: As many people as we have running around on this planet, someone with credible character would have by now seen one, captured one, shot one, or otherwise observed one in the wild. For some reason, only people with pseudo science tv shows and rednecks see them. I can say rednecks because I grew up in a small town in Louisiana where, in a nearby town, reports of a farmer sighting a family of bigfoot (plural bigfeet?? ha ha) drinking from his pond made the rounds on occasion. He said that he gathered fur from where they were, but it turned out to be wild boar hair. He got his 15 minutes of fame on the local news, but we never got proof. Humans have walked over every inch of land on this earth, and have yet to find real proof of sasquatch, bigfoot, our yeti. The oceans, however, present a much more fertile location for strange creatures...all within evolutionary reason of course.

Ha ha ha...but being part Hobbit would be pretty darn cool. :) Oddly enough, though, Hobbit was not on the list of potential ancestors. :P You might have a higher percentage of Neanderthal DNA though...and that's very cool. :)